The quick answer is “yes!” They really do bring patients into your office. But we don’t want you to have to take our word for it. We’d much rather you hear from a fellow podiatrist who launched a book campaign in spring of 2014: Dr. Evan Merrill.

Dr. Evan Merrill has seen significant interest in his book by bringing it to and marketing it at running events, as well as on his website. In the first year that the campaign was active, he saw multiple patients make appointment and come to see him specifically because they had requested his free book.

At the very first running event where the practice featured his book, Dr. Merrill received “90-100 book requests. And that was the first time we ever tried…advertising the book.” After the event, the practice saw a slow but steady stream of book requests through the website.

More importantly, over the course of the year, they started to see patients who’d decided to make their appointment because of reading Dr. Merrill’s book: “With books you don’t really receive a phone call the next day…it’s more for education. But we’ve seen people over the past year just kind of trickle in. We’ll ask them, ‘How did you find out about us?’ Some will specifically say, ‘Well, I got your book.’ Or they have a friend who has a book.”

One important thing to realize is that a campaign is more than a book. As Dr. Merrill says, “You have to realize that it’s not just giving a book out and that’s it. That’s how I thought of it at first. I thought, I’ll buy a few books and I’ll have them available, and if people request one we’ll send it to them. I didn’t realize the full 18-step campaign behind it…. It really helps it to function better than just giving a book out.”